Titanic

A Sinking Feeling

Exhibit Transforms Visitors Into Victims Aboard Doomed Ship

January 18, 1998|By MARK ST. JOHN ERICKSON Daily Press

NEWPORT NEWS — Many times since its sinking in 1912, the story of the Titanic has been told through catastrophic facts and figures.

More than 1,500 souls died on that April night - most within minutes of plunging into the North Atlantic's 28-degree water. The biggest, safest and most "unsinkable" ship that had ever been built passed rapidly, too, slipping away less than three hours after an iceberg ripped a fatal gash in its 882-foot-long hull.

FOR THE RECORD - Published correction ran Wednesday, January 21, 1998.A story in Sunday's LifeStyles section incorrectly identified a passenger aboard the Titanic as Robert Norman Douglas. His name was Robert Douglas Norman. (The text of this article has been changed to reflect the correction)

Such calamitous details play only a supporting role, however, in a new Mariners' Museum exhibit designed to put a human face on one of the greatest tragedies in maritime history. Blending period photographs, eyewitness accounts and an evocative collection of artifacts with props from a hit Hollywood film, the show takes museum-goers on an imaginary, often highly personal journey to the brink of this horrific disaster.

Pairing visitors with the stories of actual passengers and crewmen, the exhibit recreates the experience of boarding the ship, strolling by its dining salons and meeting many of the people who traveled and worked on the vessel. Then it asks guests to don meticulously reproduced life vests, step into a lifeboat and - through a bit of high-tech chicanery - sample the brutal bite of the sub-freezing temperatures that killed so many hapless men, women and children 85 years ago.

Most of all, it prompts museum-goers to ask themselves what this dramatic event might have been like - and what they might have done if, like the unlucky passengers of the Titanic, they suddenly found themselves peering into the oblivion of an unforgiving ocean.

"There are so many questions and feelings that come up when you think about what these people went through - but not when you think about the Titanic as a catastrophe of numbers," museum director Claudia Pennington says.

"If you can get people to care about someone who was there, then use that connection to put themselves in the story - to imagine themselves there - that's when this tragedy becomes real."

From its beginning, the new exhibit - "Titanic: Fate and Fortune" - focused intently on real stories and real people. It also acknowledged the mystique the disaster has had in the popular imagination since the famous ship went down on its maiden voyage.

"I know many people - serious historians and scholars - who say, `Big deal. The Titanic was a big ship, and it went to the bottom. But so what. It's always been overblown,' " Pennington says.

"Well, maybe it wasn't the biggest loss of life. Maybe it wasn't the biggest maritime disaster, either. But it is something that touches people very deeply and makes them care."

The same feelings began to embrace the Mariners' curators as they waded through the sea of books, articles and other records documenting the sinking of the Titanic. Pairing themselves with names from the passengers and crew, Pennington and her staff read thousands of pages and looked at hundreds of pictures, transforming themselves into experts on their adopted subjects.

They also began fashioning biographical portraits ranging from, in some cases, only a few poignant words to extended passages describing physical appearance and character as well as social and economic position. What resulted was a roster of roughly 100 people who became, as the work progressed, less a matter of history than something the researchers could feel.

"When you read through their postcards and letters, it's very sad," registrar Karen Schackleford says. "It can become a very personal thing."

Then the museum looked for artifacts, concentrating on the zealous community of private collectors who have made the Titanic an increasingly expensive passion over the years. What they got was a dense series of diminutive yet emotionally charged objects, many of them recovered from the passengers and crew - both dead and alive - after the catastrophe.

Though most measure no larger than the pockets of their original owners, Pennington believes they tell stories of enormous power.

Scottish engineer Robert Douglas Norman jumped into the frigid Atlantic without his life vest, for example, having given it to a female passenger and her frightened child. Despite his confidence in his ability to swim, rescuers recovered his body several days later, finding his pocket watch stopped at the exact time he hit the water.

Other objects include the Egyptian talisman clutched by the "Unsinkable Molly Brown," the Denver millionairess whose plucky will to survive made her famous. Then there are such apparently insignificant items as a water-stained mail bundle label.

Rescuers found it in the pocket of Oscar Woody after pulling his frozen body from the ocean.

"As the water came in the ship, the mail clerks struggled to pull their wet bags of mail from the bottom of the hold up the steps to safety," Pennington says. "They were the first to die because they didn't leave their post."